


Tulips

by tjmystic



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Wedding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-06
Updated: 2013-08-06
Packaged: 2017-12-22 14:05:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/914064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tjmystic/pseuds/tjmystic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Emma gets ready for her big day with Neal</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tulips

Tulips  
August Ficathon #2

 

gingerwhovianrobotskeleton prompt -Neal and Emma get married

Rating: PG-13

Author’s Note: Helloo, my lovelies! Just a cute little oneshot today to make up for the angst I’m about to bestow on you (and yes, there shall be much of it). Oh, and side note - I really, really love writing for Swanfire, so feel free to prompt me more for them :D

 

Emma spun around in the empty jail call at the station, examining herself in the full-length mirror she’d propped up there. She picked up two handfuls of her dress, trying to smile angelically like she was sure she was supposed to. But nope – she just looked like she had a toothache. And the damn dress was still too long and frilly.

She groaned and flumped down on the cot. She still didn’t know why she was agreeing to this. Just a simple ceremony, in a courthouse, out of Storybrooke, where no one could curse them for being uninvited and there was no risk of anyone choking to death on a poisoned grape seed or something. That was all that she and Neal needed – after all, they’d spent the majority of their year together living on McDonald’s in the back of their beetle. Extravagant wasn’t really their thing. And he agreed. Neal was still a show-off, but he was her show-off, and he wanted simple just as much as she did.

But then the family had to get involved. 

They’d just wanted everybody to know so that they could have a peaceful family reception after they got back. They’d thought that Mary-Margaret, David, and Mr. Gold would be a little disappointed that they wouldn’t be going to the actual wedding, but be otherwise happy and understanding. Instead, they had to sit through a two-hour lecture about how Emma hadn’t been raised like a princess like she was supposed to and the very least she could do was allow her parents to throw her a princess’s wedding. Not to mention Gold’s strategically sad comments – complete with Belle holding his hand and looking way too sympathetic – that his own wedding had taken place in the village barn and he wanted better for his son, especially since he was going to marry his actual true love. And she was going to kill whoever bribed Henry into jumping in, because they could say “no” to their parents all day, but there was no way in hell they could argue with their son’s, “Can’t we do something together? All of us?”

It hadn’t been too bad, at first. The guest list was huge, sure, and the ceremony sounded like it was gonna take forever, but it was still relatively simple. With every new thing, though, somebody who wasn’t Neal or Emma had to jump in and make things more complicated. A wedding cupcake wasn’t enough, they needed a stupid five-layer tower with a little crown on top. Simple vows wouldn’t work, she and Neal had to write their own and say them in front of a group of people they didn’t know the majority of or at least didn’t know that well. They couldn’t just walk out of the church, they had to be hailed by doves and whatever else Mary-Margaret could convince to fly overhead. It wasn’t a surprise – not that it made it any less annoying – when they said her and Neal’s clothes wouldn’t work, either. 

Which is how Neal was stuffed into a leather and velvet knight’s suit that chocked his neck (and, in Emma’s opinion, made him look like a strangled turtle), and Emma got stuck with a dress that crinkled when she moved and wouldn’t stay down no matter how hard she pressed on the sides. 

She was starting to realize that Gold had a point about her parents’ fashion sense, and that she really would have been better off letting him magic them up some outfits instead.

The only thing she was sure of, though, was that she’d feel a lot better once everything was over and she could go back to wearing jeans and walking without making noise. 

The door knocked, and Emma jumped to her feet, glaring when the dress crackled with her. 

“Yeah?” she called out. Her eyes immediately scanned to the clock on the wall – it was still thirty minutes before she had to be at the church. 

“Just me. Came to see you before the stampede.” 

Neal. Emma smiled, relieved. She took a step towards the door, needing to hug him to relieve her stress, but the moment she moved, her dress made a loud crunch. She looked down, then slumped her shoulders - Neal wasn’t supposed to see it till the wedding.  
She groaned, and turned to slide behind her desk instead, careful not to catch her dress on anything. “Shit."

Neal barged in just as she’d tucked the train of white fabric under the counter where he couldn’t see it. He looked worried, the sword he had to wear with his outfit drawn at his side. It took him a moment, but, finally, he saw her crouched behind her computer chair. His eyes went from worried to confused to amused in the space of about three seconds. She wished she could hate him for it instead of wanting to laugh with him.

"Something wrong?" he asked carefully.

Emma nodded, and tucked another stray corner out of his sight.

“Did you see anything?”

“No,” he answered slowly. His eyes were drawn together like they always were when he was confused. “Uh… what are you doing?”

Emma poked her head a little higher over the desk so she could glare at him. “What do you think I’m doing? You aren’t allowed to see me in my wedding dress for another thirty minutes!”

Neal laughed and took a step closer. She scooted further under the desk. “Come on, Em, you don’t really believe that ‘bad luck’ thing, do you?” 

She scoffed. “No. But I didn’t believe my parents were Snow White and Prince Charming, either, and look how that turned out. I’m not taking any chances.”

The smirk slipped off his face, replaced by grim understanding as he nodded back.

"Point taken," he muttered.

He twisted the collar of his suit and sat down on the cot Emma had just left. It still looked stupid, but she had to admit that the pants looked good on him. She might have to ask him if he could wear leather more often.

"So, you ready for this?" he hummed.

Emma shrugged, then, realizing he wouldn’t see it, answered, “I guess. Are you?” 

He smiled, and her stomach flopped just like it did when he smiled and she was seventeen. “I think I am. Though, I don’t really remember proposing. I might’ve been a little drunk, so -"

Emma snorted, effectively cutting him off. He smiled wider at her, but, even through her own amusement, she could tell that something was off. He wasn’t lying to her - was the only person she could think of who never lied to her, actually - but there was something he wasn’t telling her.

She leaned another inch over the counter, careful not to let him see anything more than her ridiculously long sleeves. “Everything okay?" 

His eyes creased together, but, again, she could see beneath his confusion to the part of his brain that felt relief. “Yeah. Totally.” He paused, for a moment, before continuing with, “Is everything good for you?”

“Yeah, I already said,” she answered carefully. If there was anything she knew when she heard it, it was a loaded question. 

He sighed, and looked her harshly in the eye. “Are you sure? I mean, you don’t regret this, do you?”

Emma’s eyes went wide, and that was all the incentive he needed to drop his stare.

Neal wrung his hands in his lap, thumbs reaching up to tug on his scarf that wasn’t there, something he always did when he was nervous. For a moment, she was just glad that she hadn’t forgotten about that tic of his, and that they were both still alive to see him keep doing it. 

She couldn’t imagine why he’d think she could be upset about marrying him. 

“Neal, close your eyes.”

She was surprised, and a little happier than she should’ve been, when he immediately shut them, despite the confusion around his mouth. 

“Why?”

She didn’t answer him. At least, not verbally. Instead, she stood to her feet, ignoring the obnoxious sound of her dress, and walked towards the cot until she was close enough to hold him. His shoulders tensed beneath her arms, but it didn’t take long for him to hug her back. 

“Em, what’s –”

“Look, you know I’m not a huggy person, so just go with it,” she interrupted. 

She waited until her arms felt like they might go numb from squeezing him so tight before letting go. But she didn’t move away from him, and she didn’t tell him he could open his eyes. 

“I wouldn’t have said ‘yes’ if I didn’t mean it,” she said. “You’re the only person I’ve ever been in love with, the father of our son, and, because of all this magic crap, I have proof that you’re my True Love, too.”

Neal chuckled, and she smirked before settling herself so that their eyes were only inches apart. 

“You can look now. Just don’t look at the dress.”

He blinked at her command, slow but definite, and her fingertips tingled at the sight of his brown eyes so close. Gold had taught her that magic was based on emotion. Right now, she felt like she could enchant a whole castle out of thin air. 

“I love you, okay?” she mumbled softly. “If I regretted this, you’d be the first to know. And I don’t.”

His teeth peeked out from between his lips, that puppy-like grin she’d fallen for in the first place evident in every line of his face, and then he was leaning in and touching her lips with his. 

“I love you, too.” 

Her eyes shut this time as he worked his mouth on hers, slow and soft and hard in a way that would always be too perfect to forget. He pressed his tongue to the seam of her teeth, held it there and neither begged nor demanded anything more. As always, it felt like he was just happy to have her in his arms. And that in and of itself was enough that both of them should know she didn’t regret anything. She’d told Mary-Margaret two years before that no one had ever put her first. But that wasn’t really the truth – with Neal, even when she didn’t know it, she was always the one that mattered most. 

She hitched her thighs around his hips, and he twitched between them, obvious even through the leather. It wasn’t just her fingertips that tingled this time. 

It wasn’t her, and it wasn’t whatever magic residue he’d gotten from his dad. Him, his kisses, his everything, were magical. 

Much too soon – and it would always feel much too soon, she knew it – he released her mouth and rested his forehead against hers. 

“Nice as this is,” he mumbled, his voice gruff, “we’re gonna be late.”

Emma turned around in his lap, eyeing the clock behind them. It didn’t occur to her until she noticed where the hands were – almost twenty minutes passed the moment he’d walked in – that he was talking about their wedding. Their wedding that was supposed to take place in five minutes. 

With a groan, she scrambled to her feet, attempting to straighten out her dress as futile as it was just so Neal would have a chance to do the same with his pants. 

She heard, more than felt, him sidle up next to her, shifting from foot to foot as he waited for her to turn back around. When she looked up, she saw him smiling, his spare arm reaching out for her as if he intended to walk her down the aisle himself. His other hand covered his eyes.

“Ready, Almost-Mrs. Cassidy?"

She laughed and elbowed him in the ribs. “Sure."

 

She knew that she’d told the truth, that she really was completely ready, when she walked down the aisle of the church an hour later on David’s arm. Her stomach was filled with more butterflies than it had been even when she was pregnant and Henry wouldn’t stop kicking her, but it had nothing to do with nerves and everything to do with her being happy. It didn’t matter that Regina was sitting in the front row, invited lest she ruin the party like she had for her parents once upon a time, or that Hook was sneering at them while he held up the wall to their left. It didn’t matter, that her dress was too tight, and too noisy, and too much. 

What mattered was that Mary-Margaret turned around from her seat in the very first pew with tears in her eyes. That Belle and Ruby smiled at her the whole walk down, as did Leroy and Archie. That even Gold, dressed in his best suit with a Bible open in his hands, nodded to her with respect and a knowing little smirk when she stepped in front of him and next to his son. That, when David slipped his hand out of her, his eyes were a little wet, too. That Henry hugged both her and Neal before scooting himself to the side and grinning at them both, all his teeth showing and the pillow in his hands that held their rings shaking with his excitement. That she was holding tulips as her bouquet, the one thing she’d gotten to pick out for herself because they were the only flowers not taken by some other princess. 

That Neal, for the first time all month, wasn’t tugging at his wedding outfit, because he only had eyes for her. 

She was loved. She couldn’t bring herself to care about the little things.

Their wedding day could suck it. Their marriage itself would be everything they could make out of it.


End file.
